


Five Times Geralt was Shaved and One Time He Shaved Someone Else

by Orockthro



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Facial Shaving, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mostly TV cannon, Non-Linear Narrative, some game cannon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:41:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22739746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orockthro/pseuds/Orockthro
Summary: “Jaskier...” he growls out. But there’s simply a firm hand on his head, guiding him back in the sturdy padded arm chair in the room.“Hush now, tilt your head back.”Geralt bares his throat.(Or, what it says on the tin.)
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 40
Kudos: 488
Collections: Best Geralt





	Five Times Geralt was Shaved and One Time He Shaved Someone Else

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a shitpost fic. It was, really. I'm playing Witcher 3 right now and there is seriously a dubcon shaving scene basically right out of the gates where Geralt is sat down and shaved by someone else in order to be made presentable. And multiple places to get Geralt shaved throughout the game... 
> 
> But then it turned into a real fic. ;P

**5+1 Five Times Geralt was Shaved and One Time He Shaved Someone Else**

**1.**

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, you know you look like a mountain man. This is not optional, Geralt, not if you want to join me at the reception for the Countess’s niece. You’ve been up there tracking the what’sit for too long and you look positively wild.”

Geralt grimaces, and then grimaces further when a fleck of expertly lathered floral soap finds its way into the corner of his mouth. “Hm. A pack of fleders that kept splitting off and regrouping. And I _don’t_ want to.” 

The glare he sends towards Jaskier is ineffective; the man stopped being frightened of him within minutes of their acquaintance, and Geralt has no hope now that they’re past a decade of ... companionship. Not friendship: witchers don’t have friends.

Jaskier twirls his razor and Geralt wishes he could be apprehensive about how he’s wielding it, but he isn’t; this is not the first time Jaskier has sat him down, lathered him up, and had his way with his hair and beard, citing professional need. 

“Fleders, yes, the little bat things.” Little is not the choice of words Geralt would have picked, but he ignores it. “And about the reception, yes, well I think the sir doth protest too much.”

“Jaskier...” he growls out. But there’s simply a firm hand on his head, guiding him back in the sturdy padded arm chair in the room. 

“Hush now, tilt your head back.”

Geralt bares his throat. 

**2.**

When Geralt is barely a man and most of his boyhood friends were dead-- their blood steaming in the winter snow, lost to one trial or another-- Vesimer takes him back inside the stone fortress of Kaer Morhen where a tub of cold water is waiting for him. 

“Wash and shave,” he’s told. “You lived so you’re a witcher now. You’ll start your walk on the Path tomorrow.” There’s a clap on his back as Vesimer leaves him alone, but that’s as far as the touch goes-- there is no fatherly embrace, no friendly clasp of his arm. 

Geralt shaves with icy water from the winter melt and his dagger. His discomfort is immaterial. He tells himself that he wants nothing. 

**3.**

Geralt wakes up with a surge of adrenaline, coiled muscles vaulting him from prone to squatting, fists raised and ready for a fight, witcher senses scanning for threats. 

“Sit down, witcher.”

Yennefer is smiling at him. Yennefer. God’s, it’s been months. Years, maybe. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks. His voice is thicker than usual; he’s recovering from something, then. 

“Hm,” she says, and he can’t tell if she’s mocking him. “Here, you mean saving you from that pack of Neckers that tried to chew through your belly after you fell down the ravine?”

He’s in a cabin, a warm fire is flickering gently in the corner and sending warmth radiating through the room, and Yennefer is naked but for the steam rising from the bath and her long, perfect hair. She hasn’t aged a day. Likely neither has Geralt. He doesn’t quite smile, but he does lower his fists.

“Hm.” He says back. 

“You’re welcome, by the way.”

He does a quick inventory of himself: all limbs fine, bruised about the chest and throat, head aching but solid. And he’s been groomed.

Geralt quirks his head and raises an eyebrow when he touches his face and finds it clean shaven.

Yennefer just grins. “I have delicate skin,” she says simply. 

“And high expectations.”

“Am I wrong?”

Geralt huffs. “No,” he says, and sloughs off his remaining armor onto the floor with a clank to join her in the bath. The warmth seeps into his bones and when she reaches for him, he lets her. 

**4.**

He’s shoved into the chair, dizzy from the potions still wearing off and the adrenaline crash following his long and painful battle with that beast of a basilisk up on the hill above the village. He’s cuffed down, feet tied to the chair legs, and his chin is tipped up by the glove of man Geralt would happily murder. He doesn’t remember getting here, but that is an unfortunate side-effect of his last swallowed potion, the one he took when he was fairly sure he would lose the battle. 

A hand reaches for his chest and he snaps his jaws. “Don’t touch me.”

“Or what, witcher? You couldn’t even walk in here on your own. I’m to present you to our Lord, but I won’t do so with you looking so...” 

He trails off and roughly pulls at parts of Geralt’s splitting armor.

“Monstrous.”

The man is wearing armor of his own, locally made from the clunky welding of the plate. A local enforcer, then, who picked him up after the basilisk was already felled. Coward. 

Geralt spits at him. “I’m not available to be bought by some rural baron. Untie me and I won’t murder you in your sleep.”

“Keep still,” the man says, and a bucket of cold water is dumped over Geralt’s head. “That was for the stench. And then he yanks Geralt’s head back and begins to saw at his hair, pulling and jerking his head about. “I’ll make you look like a proper beast yet.” 

“I will kill you,” Geralt hisses, and he means it. He’s been on the Path for a few years now. He’s killed monsters and a handful of bandits, too. He knows how men die, and this man he will have no problem maiming. “Let me go.” He’s still weak, but it’s fading. In a few minutes he’ll be able to break his bonds. 

“Shut up, mutant,” he’s told for his trouble, slapped across the face with the leather glove, and then a sharp blade dances across his skin, roughly shaving him and Geralt can smell the blood as it blooms across a cut on his chin. 

**5.**

Jaskier is quick-tongued and quick-fingered, too. He is elbow deep in one of Geralt’s packs, still on Roach’s sides, fishing for something or other and shameless about it. 

Geralt crosses the distance from the fire to Roach in three large steps and slaps his hand away. 

“Ouch!”

“What are you doing, bard?”

“If you must know, I was hoping to borrow your razor. It’s been days since we left that tavern in Posada after the Filavandrel mess and ’ll simply die if I don’t have a shave. You must have a razor.” And, apparently fearless and without guile he digs back into the pack. Geralt stares, almost too surprised to do anything. The last person he traveled with was a young girl he was showing back to her town after she’d been taken by a beast looking for a new child to replace its dead one. She’d sat on his horse while he walked beside and refused to look at him, crying silently the whole time.

This is different. Jaskier is unafraid.

And hedonistic beyond compare. 

Geralt grunts. “No.”

“But...” And Jaskier pulls his hands out of Geratl’s things long enough to gesture at his face, stubbled but not bearded. 

“I use my sword.”

Jaskier gasps. “No. Please, tell me you just said that to wound me. You can’t be serious. Your poor _skin_ , Geralt! No, no this won’t do at all. In the morning we’ll go to a town, any town I don’t even care which, and we’ll get you shaved _properly_. Gods above I cannot--”

Geralt tunes him out after that. 

But the bard is true to his word. When they meander into a village-- three days later, not one-- they are both looking scruffy and dirt-crusted, and Jaskier boldy reserves a room with a bath for the both of them, and then disappears to collect, “necessary supplies, you utter heathen.” 

Geralt doesn’t wait for him. He shucks his armor, his filthy and ragged shirt and trousers, and lowers himself into the steaming bath with a smile he reserves for his horse and baths alone. He drifts there, half meditating and regaining his strength and half simply enjoying the water, when Jaskier returns with an array of bottles that reek of herbs and salts. 

“Must we?”

The look Jaskier gives him could peel an onion. “Yes, Geralt of Rivia, we must. Consider this my first true gift to you as your new barker. Beyond what I’ve already done, of course.” He sprinkles one jar after another into the bath, and Geralt has to admit the scents aren’t offputting, even to his heightened senses. It’s oddly pleasant. Eucalyptus, he picks out, and salts of varying origins. A little chamomile, too. And oil pressed from seeds, added last. 

Geralt idly runs his hand through the bath and then over his arms. He’s going to smell like a damned herbalist’s shop, but it’s soothing and Jaskier is, for once in his life, quiet as he goes about his disturbingly intricate preparations. Geralt’s known monster slaying potions to be created with fewer ingredients and far less attention. 

“Close your eyes,” Jaskier commands, and Geralt sighs, but closes his eyes, and lets Jaskier slather a warm honey-scented soap lather over his neck and face. 

“This is unnecessary,” he says, because he is a witcher and he wants nothing. 

“Most of life is unnecessary, oh witcher mine, and those are the parts that are the best.” 

Jaskier’s fingers dance over his scalp as he positions a sharp razor against his cheek. “Do you trust me?”

Geralt hums deep in his throat. “No.”

A laugh from above his head, soft and musical. “We’ll work on that. Now hush,” he says, and begins to shave. 

**+1**

“Geralt I’m dying.”

“No you’re not.”

“No I am, truly, please, put me out of my misery.”

Geralt sighs. Jaskier, sitting on the edge of the bed they’ve managed to secure in the rickety inn above the stable, doesn’t look well, Geralt will admit. His eyes are sunken in and his hair is plastered to his head with old fever sweat, the actual sickness since broken. Also broken, though, is his arm, now wrapped in a sling to heal. The arm is the source of the fever, swamp water infecting the bite that broke the bone to a dangerous point that required an herbalist’s intervention and two long nights of Geralt wondering if Jaskier would simply slip away in a haze of fevered delusions and never wake. 

But the fever did break. And Jaskier, although still weak and shaking, is clawing his way desperately towards normality. 

He’s picking idly at his lute with his left hand, and the forlorn look has Geralt sighing again. 

“You will be fine. Eat the porridge or I will.”

“I don’t want porridge.”

“Mine then,” Geralt says, and reaches for the bowl of unappetizing slop, when, as predicted, Jaskier jolts himself into action, abandons his lute, and sucks down the tepid meal straight from the bowl. 

“This existence is hell, Geralt, why did you even save me from that... what was it?” 

“Neckers. You would have been fine if you’d stayed back with Roach.”

Jaskier doesn’t even latch onto that easy bait, just sits there forlornly. 

“And I can’t even shave. I’m going to look horrendous and it’s all your fault. My youthful face taken from me along with my ability to strum my lute.”

“Jaskier.”

“Yes, Geralt?”

“If I give you a shave will you shut up?”

Jaskier’s face lights up in the two seconds it takes Geralt to form the sentence. He glows like a spirit in the night and it’s almost painful to look at. 

“Would you? Not all of us can pull of the wild feral beast hunter look, you know, and without my boyish good looks making us coin--”

Geralt grunts a little and motions to the basin of cold water and the simple wooden chair by the door of their current accommodations, which he drags to the center of the room by the basin. Jaskeir shuts up long enough to hobble over to it and plunk himself down. 

A quick igni spell warms the basin enough that it won’t shock and Geralt gets to work. He’s not a deft hand at this, not like Jaskier. He shaves himself only perfunctory and has never shaved another man before. It’s intimate, more than expected. 

Jaskier tips his head back and smiles up at him from under his flop of dark hair. “Will you use the chamomile soap? There’s a sliver left.”

“You were saving it.”

“And now I’m not. Please?”

Geralt fetches it and works up a lather in his hands while Jaskier starts to doze off in the chair, startling slightly when Geralt finally reaches down and smoothes some of the soap onto his face. He continues down Jaskier’s neck, too, and he feels the man’s throat bob and his own throat tightens. 

“Am I doing this right?”

“You’re doing fine,” Jaskier says, and his voice is weak. Geralt feels another wave of unwanted guilt flow through him; he shouldn’t have left Jaskier alone in that swamp, he’d known the damned bard would follow him into the fray and he should have planned for it. 

“Should wash your hair, too.”

Jaskier merely hums, his eyes having fluttered closed and a small smile gracing his mouth. 

The quiet-- stemming from the man’s comfort and not his terrifyingly high fever-- is pleasant and sweet, and Geralt basks in it as he begins to run the razor over Jaskier’s face, careful to shave close and never nick his skin. It doesn’t take terribly long; Jaskier may have stubble but his beard isn’t thick. Geralt washes him clean and then, when it’s clear Jaskier is content to simply lean back against him like this, he rinses and soaps his hair, too. 

It’s easy to massage his scalp while he does it. It frankly happens without Geralt meaning it to, just soaping the sweaty roots and then continuing to rub circles against his scalp when Jaskier makes a contented little hum and squirms into the touch. So Geralt keeps massaging, stroking the delicate skin behind the ears, and then his neck, before finally rinsing out the hair with the remainder of the water and using his own clean shirt to towel him dry. 

When he’s done, Jaskier is looking at him, blue eyes unblinking. Silent. 

And Geralt, for once, is uncomfortable with the quiet. “Better?” he asks.

Jaskier continues to look at him, a slow smile breaking on his face. He’s still too pale, too shadowed under the eyes, but he looks _clean_ and happy. 

“Geralt, would you come here, please?”

He squints at the man before, after a second, pushing forward to stand in front of Jaskier who is still sitting in the chair in the center of the room like the subject of a painting. 

And then Jaskier is reaching out to him, pulling one hand and then the other towards him, and grasping at his face with both hands. 

And then Jaskier is kissing him. 

“Much better,” he says against Geralt’s mouth. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love.


End file.
